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Porter stood up. Paul stood up. They all sat down. Carmen said things. Porter said things. The waiter appeared and said things. It all seemed random and irrelevant, because something important was happening.
Paul and Lena, Lena and Paul. They didn’t even smile at each other or say anything. Maybe they didn’t even realize something was happening, but Carmen did. She just k
new it.
Suddenly, in the middle of the cozy four-top, a chasm opened. On one side were the world and the restaurant and all the regular people like Porter and Carmen. On the other side were Paul and Lena. As intensely alert as she was, Carmen didn’t feel like she could look at them or listen to them. She didn’t belong there, on the other side.
“Do you want to share the spicy chicken wings?” Porter asked her amiably.
Carmen felt like crying.
These were the Love Pants! They were! There was pure, transforming magic around them. But it wasn’t for her! It was never for her.
She was bad at love. She loved too hard.
Carmen’s imagination was starting to branch out in dangerous directions. Lena would become the center of Paul’s world. She could just see it. He wouldn’t care about Carmen anymore. He wouldn’t listen carefully to all the stupid things she said.
And what about Lena? What would that do to their friendship? To the Sisterhood? Where was this going to leave Carmen?
Anxiety was brewing somewhere down there, filling her stomach with acid, tangling up her intestines.
What was it about her and double dates? Why did Carmen have to sit on the sidelines of love when it was so close? Why did she end up losing instead of gaining?
She thought about her mother and David just then. He’d arrived at the apartment earlier that evening with bouquets of roses for both Christina and Carmen. Carmen had mostly appreciated the gesture because it had made her mom so supremely happy. David had known the word Carmen was stuck on in her crossword puzzle (Japanese dog, five letters, starting with a). More important, though, had been the radiance of her mother’s face, even as she’d tried to appear rational. That wasn’t losing. That was gaining.
Over in the world of Lena and Paul, Paul murmured something to Lena. Lena looked down at the table shyly, but when she looked up again, she had a smile as lovely as any Carmen had ever seen her wear. Some things had changed with Lena.
Carmen could ignore what she was seeing. She could feel threatened and try to stomp on it before it could dig roots.
Or maybe she could figure that Lena and Paul were two of the people she loved best on the planet, and they each deserved the love of someone as worthy as the other.
Suddenly Carmen’s head snapped up. “Lena?”
Lena seemed to travel many miles to reach her.
“Yes?”
“Can you come with me for just a second?”
Both Paul and Lena seemed to look at her in wonderment at how she could be so loud and encroaching. “Just a second, I promise,” Carmen added.
Once in the bathroom, Carmen unbuttoned the Pants. She shed them quickly. “Give me yours and take these, okay?”
“Why are you doing this?” Lena asked.
“Because I know it is going to be an important night for you.” Carmen’s heart was pounding.
“How do you know?” Lena looked almost scared.
Carmen pressed her palm to her heart. “I just do. I know it.”
Lena fixed her wide eyes on Carmen’s. “Important how? How do you mean?”
Carmen cocked her head. “Len. If you don’t know, you’ll know soon. You’ve been through a lot this summer. It could take a while.”
Lena looked confused. She wasn’t going to argue. She pulled the Pants on. The air seemed to glimmer with them.
Thank God Lena wore drawstring pants tonight, Carmen thought, pulling them on and tying them quickly.
Lena was already floating forward, through the door and out into the restaurant. Watching Lena walk to Paul, Carmen sensed it was one of those strange points in time when the world unfolds. Maybe Carmen was the only one who could see it.
This is how it is going to be, Carmen thought. And she’d find a way to love love, however it appeared.
Lena lay in her bed at home. As usual, she was thinking restlessly about a boy. But tonight, strangely enough, the boy in question wasn’t the usual one. This new one was taller and squarer and so earnest in the eyes. The way he looked at her, it felt like he could see everything, but would only take what she was ready to give. He wasn’t married. He hadn’t gotten anybody pregnant, so far as she knew.
Somehow or other, in the space of about ninety seconds, she’d let go of the trapeze she was flying on, hovered in heart-stopping midair, and grabbed a trapeze flying in the opposite direction.
Since when had she become a highflyer? She had to wonder. How had she gone from an emotional hermit to a trapeze artist?
She was concerned for her safety.
She called Tibby. She hadn’t spoken to her since she’d gotten home, and she felt like being out loud.
“Tib, I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she moaned, unsure whether her moan was happy or sad. Up on the high swing, the two feelings seemed to merge, identical in their intensity.
“What is it, Len?” Tibby said as tenderly as Tibby ever said anything.
“I think I have that disease where your heart swells up.”
“Well,” Tibby said philosophically, “I guess I would say, Better a swollen heart than a shrunken one.”
When Carmen walked in the door after dropping Lena off, she heard the phone ringing. She answered it in the kitchen.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Carmen, it’s Porter.”
“Hey,” she said, surprised.
“Listen, I give up. I just wanted you to know that. A person can only take so much.”
Carmen swallowed hard. For some reason, she felt her heart beating in all the wrong parts of her body. “Um, what do you mean?” she said timidly, dishonestly. She didn’t want to know what he meant, but that didn’t mean she didn’t.
Porter let out a breath. “I’ll be honest. I’ve had a huge crush on you for, like, two years. I was psyched to get together with you this summer. I really hoped it could work out, but Jesus, Carmen, how many times can you lead a guy on?”
Porter paused, giving her an opportunity to defend herself, but she was so stunned she couldn’t activate her tongue. It just lolled there unhelpfully in her mouth.
“I was confused when you kept calling. When we went out, I could tell you weren’t that into it, but then you’d call me again.” He didn’t sound irritable. He sounded resigned. “So anyway, I have officially given up. I can act like an idiot for only so long.”
In her gaping, sputtering silence it began to dawn on Carmen that Porter was not the person she’d thought he was. Then again, had she thought at all, for even a second, about what kind of person he was? She had considered his objective boyfriend merit at great length, but not that he had actual feelings or that, God forbid, he would talk about them. He was a boy, a potential Boyfriend, an enviable accessory, much like a very good handbag.
Wasn’t he?
“I know you were distracted by the whole thing with your mom, and I understand that. But I thought maybe after it was fixed up, we could hang out finally.”
No, he wasn’t.
She felt her cheeks burning. She had been so colossally off base about him she almost had to laugh.
“Porter?” she said. His name felt different to her now. She suddenly felt as if she might be talking to a friend.
“Yeah?”
“I can act like an idiot for a lot longer than you.”
He laughed, albeit heavily.
They hadn’t laughed together, she realized. She hadn’t given him much cause to.
“I don’t know what to say for myself except that I didn’t realize that you are a real person,” she said honestly.
“What did you think I was?”
“God … I don’t know. A penguin?”
He laughed a little more and cleared his throat. “I’m not sure how to take that.”
“I was wrong, though.”
“I’m not a penguin?”
“No.”
“Glad to hear it.”
She took a long, sad breath.
“I’m really sorry,” she said, wishing s
he didn’t so often put herself in the position of owing people large and sincere apologies.
“Accepted,” he said easily.
“Thanks,” she said.
“You take care, Carmen.” His voice was intimate. It was nice.
“Thanks,” she said again, even more quietly, and she heard him hang up.
As she put the phone down, she knew she’d gotten what she deserved. And the sick thing was, she could imagine for the first time what it might feel like to really like him.
She smiled faintly as she pulled on her fuzzy red pajamas, the ones she wore when she was sick. She felt ashamed, but also strangely hopeful.
The next morning, after having ridden through the night, Bee leaped off the bus in Bethesda, Maryland, but she didn’t go home. She went straight to Lena’s house. She gave Ari a wordless hug at the door and went upstairs.
Lena was lying on her bed, still in her pajamas with the green and black olives.
She sat up at the sight of Bridget. Bridget let out a small yell and almost tackled her in an embrace, then pulled away to study her more carefully.
Bridget had expected to find flat-out tragedy in her friend’s face, but she didn’t. She saw something more complicated than that.
“You heard about Bapi?” Lena asked.
Bee nodded solemnly.
“You heard about Kostos?”
Bee nodded again.
“I’m a mess, huh?” she said.
“Are you?” Bee asked gently, studying Lena’s eyes.
Lena looked toward the ceiling. “I don’t even know what I am.” She flopped back onto the bed, and she smiled when Bee flopped next to her.
“I loved him so much,” she said to Bee. She closed her eyes and started to cry. As she cried, she wasn’t even sure which “him” she was talking about. She felt Bee’s arms close around her.
“I know,” Bee said soothingly. “I’m so sorry.”
When Lena came up for air, Bee was looking thoughtful. “You’re different, Lenny,” she said.
Lena laughed a little through her tears. She touched one of Bee’s lovely yellow strands. “You’re the same. I mean, you changed back into yourself.”
“I’m hoping it’s a harder-wearing version,” Bee said.
